As an FYI, rip currents don’t require rain in your particular location…

March 15, 2023, 08:34 PM

It was windy, overcast, and rough today - and raining north of me - but I have become a bit dependent on my afternoon swim.

Grab a heavy robe, wool cap, and figure I might only swim one session, but I should be warm enough in the water…

5 minutes in, I’m getting much more tired than I should be, look at the beach, and realize I’m going far faster than I should be.

(Fortunately, I wasn’t a total idiot, and swam into an an area where the waves were driving against the shore - still took me a couple minutes to come in about 20 yards…)

Any future rough day swimming will be at slack tide/when the tide is rising…

March 15, 2023, 08:37 PM

nhracecraft

If you are in a rip current, swim parallel to the shore until you escape the current's pull. Do NOT try to swim directly into to shore.

March 16, 2023, 07:42 AM

Aglifter

Got it. I rode the waves in, as best I could, and angled rather than head right in. Not a fun feeling though…. So it was fun for a bit - kinda like body surfing, along the swell, instead of on it - then I realized I needed to get in before I got carried out.

March 16, 2023, 08:16 AM

gearhounds

Swim parallel to shore on your back doing a breast stroke style kick and sweeping your arms in time with your legs until you are out of the rip. Unless you have extremely low body fat, salt water will buoy you extremely well and conserve energy.

Rip currents don’t keep pulling you out to sea indefinitely, and they are not a super wide, non-stop phenomenon. The people that drown in them most often panic and exhaust themselves trying to power their way straight in to shore. You can float for a very long time in salt water without expending a lot of effort. Panic with adrenaline (and possibly poor swimming skills) are what get people killed.

A few years ago I was at OCMD with family and saw what I recognized as deflated Mylar balloons a good ways off shore. I’m a good swimmer and I was bored, so I went out to get them. I did a slow, easy breast stroke the whole way out, and when I got to them realized it was a longer swim than it appeared from shore. The beach disappeared between swells and I couldn’t hear the breakers at all. It was uncannily quiet but peaceful. I set back out in a relaxed back crawl dragging the balloons with me and after a few minutes heard one of the lifeguards asking me if I was ok. He had deployed with his swim buoy to “get me”. I told him I was fine and didn’t bother to break my pace as I passed him. Of course, since I was about 55 and he in his 20’s, he looked flustered and asked me not to do it again

. When I got to shore, I asked a different guard how far out I was and he estimated about 200+ yards. My wife tried to take a pic with her phone and I was just a dot among the swells. I ended up about 100 yards south of our umbrella when I get back to shore. I never felt fatigued, never felt any fear or trepidation, and went right back to playing in the surf. Granted, this is not a rip current story, but the same applies. Don’t panic, and don’t exhaust yourself trying to power your way back to shore.

As an aside, I often take my kids (15, 20) out about 50-75 yards and float a while, then slow swim back to shore so they understand that just because you can’t touch the bottom, it’s nothing to be afraid of. We are all fairly lean and have no trouble floating without any effort whatsoever.

March 16, 2023, 11:56 PM

Tom Highway

quote:
Originally posted by gearhounds:
Swim parallel to shore on your back doing a breast stroke style kick and sweeping your arms in time with your legs until you are out of the rip. Unless you have extremely low body fat, salt water will buoy you extremely well and conserve energy.

Rip currents don’t keep pulling you out to sea indefinitely, and they are not a super wide, non-stop phenomenon. The people that drown in them most often panic and exhaust themselves trying to power their way straight in to shore. You can float for a very long time in salt water without expending a lot of effort. Panic with adrenaline (and possibly poor swimming skills) are what get people killed.

A few years ago I was at OCMD with family and saw what I recognized as deflated Mylar balloons a good ways off shore. I’m a good swimmer and I was bored, so I went out to get them. I did a slow, easy breast stroke the whole way out, and when I got to them realized it was a longer swim than it appeared from shore. The beach disappeared between swells and I couldn’t hear the breakers at all. It was uncannily quiet but peaceful. I set back out in a relaxed back crawl dragging the balloons with me and after a few minutes heard one of the lifeguards asking me if I was ok. He had deployed with his swim buoy to “get me”. I told him I was fine and didn’t bother to break my pace as I passed him. Of course, since I was about 55 and he in his 20’s, he looked flustered and asked me not to do it again . When I got to shore, I asked a different guard how far out I was and he estimated about 200+ yards. My wife tried to take a pic with her phone and I was just a dot among the swells. I ended up about 100 yards south of our umbrella when I get back to shore. I never felt fatigued, never felt any fear or trepidation, and went right back to playing in the surf. Granted, this is not a rip current story, but the same applies. Don’t panic, and don’t exhaust yourself trying to power your way back to shore.

As an aside, I often take my kids (15, 20) out about 50-75 yards and float a while, then slow swim back to shore so they understand that just because you can’t touch the bottom, it’s nothing to be afraid of. We are all fairly lean and have no trouble floating without any effort whatsoever.

Sounds like the guy was just doing his job.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the ocean above and below surface, night and day, rain and shine. Sometimes you don’t know you’re in a jackpot before someone else notices first..

March 17, 2023, 05:10 AM

gearhounds

The second guard was near where I set out and said he watched me the whole way and never saw anything that indicated that I needed assistance. He laughed it off and said the first guy just wanted to go for a swim because it was hot, and we had a good laugh over it. Point is, rip currents when they are occurring are individual, short lived occurrences that don’t “drag you out to sea indefinitely”, and are nothing to panic over if you know how to swim or properly float, and know how to deal with them.